The participants should take into consideration the advances in technology, the exploration of sustainable systems, and the establishment of new urban and architectural methods to solve economic, social, and cultural problems of the contemporary city including the scarcity of natural resources and infrastructure and the exponential increase of inhabitants, pollution, economic division, and unplanned urban sprawl. More information on the competition’s official website.
The 10 winners of the fifth VMZINC® Archizinc Trophy awards program, sponsored by the Umicore Group, were unveiled this month at the Terrass Kardinal in Paris. The bi-annual competition for architects requires that the submitted designs use VMZINC solutions in original projects. VMZINC is the international rolled zinc products brand manufactured and marketed by Umicore Building Products USA, headquartered in Raleigh, North Carolina. Winners included six projects in the categories “Private Housing,” “Commercial Buildings,” and “Public Buildings”. More information on the winners after the break.
Architects love LEGOs, this is a well-known fact. So what could be better than a real-life bridge made out of the colorful toys themselves?
Unfortunately, of course, the LEGOs are actually an optical illusion designed by street artist Martin Heuwold of MEGX - but that doesn’t make the project look any less awesome. The bridge, painted last fall, is part of an Urban renewal project in the city of Wuppertal meant “to reinvigorate the city and increase residents’ quality of life.” The High Line-style bridge is actually part of a larger 10-mile cycle path being built on what was once the city’s Northern Railway.
More pics of the LEGO Bridge, as well as a LEGO forest & a real-life Monopoly board on the streets of Chicago, after the break…
The design for a new 7,500 sqm Deinze Town Hall & Administrative Center, designed by Tony Fretton Architects, sets the administrative accommodation in a 5-storey reconfigurable loft building and the council chamber as a projecting double height room, with the public entrance foyer below. Commissioned by the City of Deinze following an international competition held in 2009, the building accommodates Deinze’s municipal departments, offices for the mayor and aldermen together with a new council chamber. The project is set to begin construction in early 2013. More images and architects’ description after the break.
World Monuments Fund (WMF) is inviting nominations for the 2012 World Monuments Fund/Knoll Modernism Prize. The prize will be awarded to a design professional or firm in recognition of innovative design solutions that preserved or saved a modern landmark at risk. Established in 2008, the goal is to raise public awareness of the contribution modernism makes to contemporary life and the important and influential role that architects and designers play in preserving modern heritage. Nominated projects should have enhanced a site’s architectural, functional, economic, and environmental sustainability while benefiting the community, and must have been completed in 2007 or after. Nominations must be submitted by July 31, 2012. More information on the competition after the break.
The various feelings of enjoyment or of displeasure rest not so much upon the nature of the external things that arouse them as upon each person’s own disposition to be moved by these to pleasure or pain.
Immanuel Kant, Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime (1764)
Levitated Mass, Michael Heizer’s new installation at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, is a complicated piece for being what it is: a rock. It’s a very large rock. A megalith, to be precise.
To me, “megalith” conjures something prehistoric, the specter of dinosaurs and the great extinction event that swept them off the Earth. Flowing lava. Desolate pre-human landscapes. Those opening scenes from Stanley Kubric’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. These are things Mr. Heizer, the darling artist of the architecture world, is master of with his land art.
But, there is something wrong with this rock.
The UK’s largest arts centre, occupying an 21-acre site that sits in the midst of London’s most vibrant cultural quarter on the South Bank of the Thames, has announced the shortlist of architects competing to head the refurbishment and renewal of the Queen Elizabeth Hall, Purcell Room and Hayward Gallery complex. According to a statement released by the Southbank Centre, the project plans to bring the performance spaces and galleries in the complex up to the standard of the recently transformed Royal Festival Hall and will address current urgent problems including poor access to and the upgrading of the stages and galleries; sub-standard back stage areas; and worn out services.
The eight shortlisted practices are:
“Welcome to the Vertical Village” is a new exhibition now open until October 7th at Total Museum of Contemporary Art in Seoul Korea. The show is orchestrated by MVRDV and The Why Factory and is on its second run since opening in Taipei. Each city has experience a different design of the exhibit, which allows visitors to walk through a giant model of a possible Vertical Village and experience the spatial richness and three dimensionality. The exhibit explores “a city under rapid transformation” and the alternative to the “block attack” to find the ideal built environment. The show features films, outdoor sculpture and a giant vertical village composed of more than 700 objects.
More on the exhibition after the break.
The architectural scene in Kerala, India is in its volatile best and hence the right time to breed path breaking design concepts in new age residential design. In this directionless period, the ‘residence NEXT’ workshop, put on by Indian Institute of Architects, Thrissur Center and The Architects Club, Thrissur, aims to spawn a few design thoughts that could be the guiding force for the future. Taking place September 27-29 at KT Muhammed Memorial Regional Theatre, students and young architects will be selected from all over the world based on their portfolios. For more information and how to apply, please visit their website here.
After WWII, the East End of Long Island played host to a variety of architectural styles. From modernism, through post-modernism, and deconstructionism, architects experimented with social ideas and aesthetic expressions which culminated in “small” houses scattered about the Island’s natural backdrop. Now, with the advent of the mega-mansion and the desire for “bigger”, it is becoming increasingly difficult to preserve such iconic and progressive architectural projects.
More about the film after the break.
This post features time lapses of the construction of various venues that will be hosting the 2012 London Olympics. With the opening ceremony Friday, July 27, these construction time lapses give you an inside look to all of the effort put into the games. If you get a chance to watch the games, you will now have a new found appreciation for the amount of work it takes to hold a major event such as this. More videos after the break.
The Architects in Missions (AIM) recently launched their 2012 architecture competition with the topic, “Shengsi Islands: Renewing China’s Traditional Village Lifestyle.” In setting their sights upon the eastern gate of China: Shengsi Islands, participants are challenged in guiding the island villages toward a diversified economy through sustainable tourism development. Over the course of this society’s development, the unique fishing village, its products, and its lifestyle, represent a cultural resource that cannot be replicated. With the premise of helping the local population of the Shengsi Islands integrate into modern life, how can the ecology and residential environment of this archipelago be protected? The submission deadline is August 31. For more information, please visit here.
Latitude 33, a luxurious collection of beach-side homes ranging from townhouses, penthouses, and single floor units, was partially designed from a forty year-old, nine-storey “eye sore for the neighborhood” that was once an office building. The mixed use development, designed by KAA Design Group, includes residential and commercial spaces in Marina del Rey in Southern California. The strategic decisions involved with designing these apartments from an early 197os office building earned Latitude 33 two Gold Nugget Merit Awards, one of which was for Best Adaptive Reuse.
Read on for more after the break.
No architectural gem is safe from Detroit’s foreclosure crisis – not even two of Mies Van der Rohe’s very own creations. The Lafayette Towers, two 22-story towers of 584 units, originally part of a major urban redevelopment project in the late 50s early 60s, are up for auction July 18th.
But be warned, there is a catch…
Find out the fine print, after the break.
How does it sound when Richard Jackson, MD, MPH, host of Designing Healthy Communities says that we are among the first generation in modern history to have shorter lifespans than our parents? It is a frightening thought, especially when it is compounded with the idea that the way in which we have designed – that is our buildings, our streets, our infrastructure, our food, our lifestyles – for decades has contributed to it. Designing Healthy Communities is a project that is dedicated to confronting contemporary issues of public health associated with the built environment and offering solutions that encourage reshaping our interactions, lifestyles and design strategies. In a series of episodes, Dr. Jackson discusses various factors within our environment that has caused rampant chronic health problems, the most prominent of which is Type 2 Diabetes caused by obesity. It comes down to an environment that promotes a sedentary lifestyle and poor food choices.
More on this series after the break.
“We borrow from nature the space upon which we build.”
-Tadao Ando
Great leaders such as OMA, SCB, Aedas, Zaha Hadid, SOM, Foster & Partners are part of the structure of the master program, among others top tier global practices in a module called “The Architect’s Backstage” (brief video below). Each one of these practices excels in coupling their management and design strategies and share with students their experience in the necessary back office work to achieve outstanding design. IE School of Architecture & Design started an unexpected shift in education that has been recognized by the Design Intelligence Report of 2010 where it is ranked as “Hidden Gem of Global Architecture” (among few non-US schools to receive mention).
More after the break.
Your Macbook Air has come at a price. And I’m not talking about the $1,000 bucks you shelled out to buy it.
I’m talking about the cost of lightness. Because the dirty secret of the “Cloud” – that nebulous place where your data goes to live, thus freeing up your technological devices from all that weight – is its very physical counterpart.
Data Centers. Giant, whirring, power-guzzling behemoths of data storage – made of cables, servers, routers, tubes, coolers, and wires. As your devices get thinner, the insatiably hungry cloud, the data centers, get thicker.
So why are you struggling to picture one in your mind? Why do we have no idea what they look like? What they do? Where they are? Because Data Centers have been hidden away and, although carefully planned, intentionally “undesigned.” The goal is to make the architecture so technologically efficient, that the architecture becomes the machinery, and the machinery the architecture. In the words of author Andrew Blum, Data Centers are “anti-monuments” that ”declare their own unimportance.”
But if architecture is the expression of our society’s values and beliefs, then what does this architectural obliteration mean? That we are willfully ignoring the process that creates the data we daily consume. As long as the internet works, who cares where it came from (or at what cost — and there is a considerable cost)?
So can design change our alienated relationship to our data? Should it? And if so, how?
Tonight, Renzo Piano’s Shard will officially celebrate its opening complete with an amazing light show. A dozen lasers and thirty searchlights will beam streams of light across the city, creating a network between 15 other significant landmarks in London, such as the Gherkin, London Eye, Tate Modern, and Tower Bridge. (So, if you are in London, don’t miss the event at 10.15 this evening, and be sure to share some photos with us!)
Capping out at 310 meters, the Shard has become the tallest building in London, as well as the entire European Union. We have been following the history of Renzo Piano’s creation, and although laden with financial troubles, a change in developers, and criticism from Londoners, the project has finally reached completion.
More about the history of the tower after the break.
With less than a week left to register, the HOME design competition, hosted by Building Trust International, seeks to find well designed homes for the elderly or homeless within some of the World’s richest countries. The growing rate in single occupancy households has led to increased numbers of young and elderly people affected by poverty being forced to live in substandard living conditions & in the worst cases sleeping rough. They We are asking designers, engineers, architects and house builders to provide a solution to the housing crisis by offering sustainable, affordable small homes that give those that are alienated or marginalized within society a safe place to live. For more information, please visit here.
Situ Fabrication was hired by MA3 Agency to engineer and build six display structures for Audemars Piguet’s Royal Oak 40th Anniversary Exhibition. Designed by Sebastien Leon Agneessens, the structures, entitled ‘Fragments’, house a number of historic Audemars Piguet watches, media displays and a watchmaking workshop. The exhibition stops in New York City, Milan, Paris, Beijing, Singapore, and Dubai throughout the year. More images can be viewed in the gallery after the break.
But you can browse the last one: 417
